Category: IPOs

Yesterday I attended a presentation by Renalytix AI (RENX), a company which listed on AIM last November. They are focused on revolutionizing the diagnosis of kidney disease. This is an area I know something about having suffered from renal disease for at least 35 years, if not longer (a lot of renal disease goes unrecognised and undiagnosed for years).

The cost of renal disease is enormous and is estimated to be $90 billion per annum in the USA alone. The reason is because treatment options (dialysis or transplant) once End Stage Renal Disease (ESRD) is reached are very expensive. A lot of renal disease, although there are several types, is caused by diabetes which we know is a rapidly escalating problem in the world. The company aims to develop better diagnosis so as to separate out those people who are likely to escalate into ESRD and who could be treated to prevent the need for dialysis or transplant and hence save most of the costs incurred by Medicare and others (the company is very focused on the US market).

When the company listed it was effectively a start-up but they did acquire some technology from EKF Diagnostics. Namely some tests for biomarkers in blood that are predictive to some degree. The company aims to combine this with other patient data to provide an accurate diagnostic. They have partnered with Mount Sinai, a very large US healthcare provider who have a large database of patient records and a biobank of blood samples. They also have other similar partners. They hope to sell the diagnostic test and analysis for less than $1000. Clearly the key is whether the test and analysis they are developing is validated by actual studies of predictability which they hope to have this year in the second quarter, and whether reimbursement for the cost is approved.

When asked how many diagnostic tests they might sell in future periods, the CEO said they were unable to forecast that at this time. It was also said they hope to breakeven by the end of the year, but clearly financial forecasts are somewhat uncertain.

They have also licensed some technology from Mount Sinai (FractalDX) for the monitoring of kidney transplants and medication thereof which is key to achieving low rejection and long-term survival rates. This provides a second product line. There is potential competition in that area but not apparently a strong one.

The company raised $27 million in the IPO and have spent $11 million on IP licenses plus $1.4 million on software/AI development and clinical assay development leaving them with $13.1 million in cash at the end of December. They don’t expect to run out of cash this year, but there is a clear risk that they will need more funding in due course. Current market cap is £76 million.

Why did they list on AIM rather than the USA? Not totally clear but probably because it is easier to raise capital for a new venture in a public listing on AIM than in US markets.

The company has an impressive board led by CEO James McCullough so one does not doubt that they have the required expertise and ability to achieve their ambition. But it’s still an unproven product in an unproven business model.

I questioned whether improved early-stage diagnosis would help when in the past treatments for kidney disease have been few. But this is apparently changing with products such as SGL2 inhibitors now available. It’s certainly an area where a lot of research to develop new drug treatments is taking place.

In conclusion, I was impressed by the management, although in such presentations by AIM companies you usually hear a persuasive “story”. But I was not totally convinced that they have a revolutionary product, at least one proven, or one that will justify the cost over other cheaper ways of picking up renal disease at an early stage and monitoring its progression. Simple checks such as for high blood pressure and blood in urine (which can be picked up by a dipstick) and blood tests for creatinine and other measures are readily available. They will need to prove that their biomarker tests and AI analysis of other patient parameters provide significant benefit. If they do the market potential is enormous. If not it might prove a disappointing investment.

A company to keep an eye on I suggest rather than plunge into at this stage unless you like high-risk propositions.

Here are some comments on the IPOs of AJ Bell and FinnCap which are open to private investors ̶ the former to any of their clients who wish to put in £1,000 or more. The latter can be purchased from the PrimaryBid platform.

One reason why you might wish to buy AJ Bell shares, or at the very least read their prospectus, is if you are a client who uses their Youinvest platform. As we saw with past debacles in stockbrokers, such as the recent events at Beaufort, because investors on such platforms are in nominee accounts it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on their accounts. Being a shareholder means you can go along to their AGMs and ask questions. Investors will be pleased to hear that AJ Bell claim to have a “strong regulatory capital position which is supported by a high Pillar I coverage in excess of approximately 440%”.

The company has 95,000 retail investor customers and 89,000 customers via advisors. All are execution-only clients, i.e. AJ Bell provides no advice. Their average customer account value is higher than most of their big competitors and this is probably because of their historic concentration on SIPP accounts which represent 63% by asset value of their accounts.

Founder Andy Bell is still with the company as CEO after 23 years and will remain. No very specific reasons are given for the IPO – it’s just referred to as a “natural next step”. No new capital is being raised and Andy Bell is selling 10% of his shares in the IPO, which will cut his holding to 25%, but together with related parties (a “Concert Party”) he will still control more than 30% after the IPO. Major shareholder Invesco is also selling a major proportion of their shareholding. No new money is being raised for the company.

The financials look very good in comparison with many platform operators, other than possibly Hargreaves Lansdown who are the gorilla in this market, but the shares are likely to be cheaper than theirs. Share price range will be between £1.54 and £1.66 giving a market cap of over £626 million.

Is it a good time to invest in platform operators whose profits can depend on the volume of share trading and assets under management? Certainly recent volatility might have helped but it is difficult to judge the longer-term trend. But as stockbrokers are highly regulated businesses it’s worth reading the “Risk Factors” and associated warnings in the prospectus. Market trends of an ageing population who may be tending to move their pension funds into SIPPs or have saved in ISAs has no doubt helped AJ Bell in recent years and is likely to continue to do so. This has generated compound growth in numbers of customers at AJ Bell of 24% in the last 7 years.

It’s particularly interesting to read the “asset transfer momentum” table on page 45 of the prospectus. That shows AJ Bell among the top few for transfers in, while Alliance Trust Savings is at the bottom – perhaps Alliance Trust were wise to dispose of it.

I have never heard complaints about the AJ Bell IT platform (they have a proprietary client front-end with “outsourced” software being used for the back-office work), so that bodes well for the future. Although it would be good if they made it easier for investors to vote their shares on their nominee platform which I think was promised but has not arrived.

I think this will be a popular IPO and although the market has been depressed by Brexit worries it might therefore get away easily. But you’ll have to make your own mind up whether it is good or bad value. I repeat my warning about buying IPOs in general – the sellers know more about the business and market trends than you do.

As regards FinnCap, they spell it as “finnCap” which rather shows their ignorance of English grammar. The business is a small company corporate broker and AIM Nomad. I hold a number of AIM companies who they act as broker for and they seem to do a competent job on the whole – at least no worse than any other AIM Nomad who operate in a market full of companies with optimistic future growth projections but frequently unrealistic ambitions and unproven management. This is no doubt a business with substantial regulatory risk.

FinnCap are merging with Cavendish Corporate Finance before the IPO. As a very people-dependent business, operating in a cyclical market sector, I am not sure these kinds of companies are ideal to be public companies. Therefore I won’t even attempt to comment on the valuation.

The Andrew Marr interview of Arron Banks was all good knock-about stuff but there was no knock-out blow inflicted. Andrew Marr was interviewing Arron Banks about his £8 million funding of the Leave.EU campaign. The Electoral Commission have recently asked the National Crime Agency (NCA) to investigate the matter as they apparently do not believe his story about the source of the funding. The suggestion has been made that the funding came from Russian sources or from a company registered in the Isle of Man (Rock Holdings) which would not have been permitted under electoral law.

Mr Banks made it clear that the money came from Rock Services Ltd and strenuously denied it came from other sources. Andrew Marr suggested Rock Services was a “shell” company and that neither that company nor Mr Banks had sufficient financial resources to cover the £8 million in funding.

Rock Services Ltd hardly looks like a “shell” company which is normally used to describe a company with no revenue and no assets apart from possibly some cash. Rock Services had Turnover of £50 million for the year ending December 2017 but little in the way of profits or net assets. But it did have fixed assets of over £1 million. This is hardly a “shell” company in the normal usage of the word. The “Strategic Report” says the company’s “principal business activity is that of performing a recharge function for services for the Group and other related parties”. The profit of the company is generated from service charges added to costs and salary recharges.

Aaron Banks has been running motor insurance companies for many years and is involved in a group of companies which includes Rock Services, Rock Holdings and UK registered Eldon Insurance. I vaguely recall he was involved in a company called Brightside I held shares in from 2012/2014 which was publicly listed before being taken over. The accounts of Eldon Insurance can also be read at Companies House and indicate revenue of £77 million and profits of £1.8 million in 2017. Another substantial company in the Group is Southern Rock Insurance which is based in Gibraltar. You can see a complete list of group companies and their transactions through Rock Services Ltd on page 15 of their accounts.

In summary the allegation that Mr Banks or his UK companies did not have the financial resources to make the donation to Leave.EU is not reasonable, and Andrew Marr and his researchers should have looked into the background more before making the allegations he made.

As Mr Banks said in the interview, other donations were made to the remain campaign from subsidiaries of foreign companies. Why were they not being investigated? It certainly looks like a witch-hunt to me. It would seem to be more about politics than election regulation.

Note that Companies House is an invaluable source of information on companies and their directors. All investors should be familiar with it. It can be useful in other ways – for example I recently obtained a bid from a company to provide web site development work. That was done from the email address of a company that was different to that from which they suggested would do the billing. When I looked the former company up at Companies House it had actually changed name a couple of years ago and under its latest name had got appallingly bad references on the internet. Needless to say I decided not to do business with them.

Smithson Investment Trust (SSON) is now trading at a remarkable premium to net asset value of 7.4% according to the AIC after its recent IPO. Bearing in the mind the state of the market and the fact that it can hardly have yet invested the money raised (one might call it a “shell” company), it would seem investors are putting a high premium on the name of Terry Smith and his involvement in this trust. There must be investors out there who are purchasing shares at that premium to maintain this “discount” but that seems very unwise to me when most investment trusts have historically traded at a discount. The reason for this is quite simple – investment trusts incur costs in management and administration which reduces the yield and returns on the underlying shares they hold. Investors can always buy the underlying shares directly to avoid those costs. In the recent bull market and recognition of late of the merits of investment trusts, some have been trading at small premiums but a premium of 7.4% when the company has no track record and will be mainly holding cash seems somewhat unreasonable.

As I said when reviewing the IPO, it may be best to wait and see what transpires for this trust.

Patisserie (CAKE) and the recent General Meeting have been covered in several previous blog posts. I have previously mentioned that I was not happy that Luke Johnson did not answer my questions – he ruled them out along with a lot of others. When can a Chairman refuse to answer questions in a General Meeting? It was always judged to be matter of common law that questions should be answered but that has now actually been put into a Regulation.

I have written to Mr Johnson and my letter includes these paragraphs:

As regards the conduct of the General Meeting, I suggest you not only handled it badly as Chairman but that refusing to answer my questions was a breach of The Companies (Shareholders’ Rights) Regulations 2009. There are valid grounds on which you can refuse to answer questions at General Meetings but the reason you gave for not answering mine (refusal to answer any questions that might prejudice the investigations) was not a valid one.

If you study the aforementioned regulations, you will see that the directors can refuse to answer questions that would require disclosure of confidential information or “if it is undesirable in the interests of the company or the good order of the meeting that the question be answered”. That may be quite broad but it hardly covers the questions I posed and the answers to my questions would certainly not have prejudiced any investigations.

I have therefore asked him to answer the questions in my letter. He may have other things on his mind, but all company directors should be aware of the law, or take legal advice when required.

Shareholders should not allow directors to ignore their responsibility to answer reasonable questions.

I agreed with FT writer Neil Collins in a previous article when discussing the prospective IPO of Aston Martin (AML) – “never buy a share in an initial public offering” he suggested because those who are selling know more about the stock than you do. We were certainly right about that company because the share price is now 24% below the IPO price.

Smithson Investment Trust (SSON) did rather better on its first day of trading on Friday, moving to a 2% premium. That’s barely enough to have made it worth stagging the issue though. But I think it will be unlikely to outperform its benchmark in the first year simply because as the largest ever investment trust launch it might have great difficulty investing all the cash quickly enough. On the other hand, if the market continues to decline, holding mainly cash might be an advantage.

One company that is lining up for a prospective IPO is AJ Bell who operate the Youinvest investment platform. They reported positive numbers for the year ending September recently but I suspect the IPO may be delayed given recent stock market conditions. One symptom of this is perhaps their rather surprising recent missive to their clients that discouraged some people from investing in the stock market. This is what it said: “In this year’s annual survey we had a small number of customers who identified themselves as ‘security seekers’, which means, ‘I am an inexperienced investor and I do not like the idea of risking my money and would prefer to invest in cash deposits’. If this description sounds like you, please consider whether an AJ Bell Youinvest account is right for you. If in doubt, you should consult a suitably qualified financial adviser”. It rather suggests that a number of people have moved into stock market investment after a long bull run and have not considered the risks of short-term declines in the market.

An interesting article was published on another platform operator, Hargreaves Lansdown (HL.), in this week’s Investors Chronicle. Phil Oakley took apart the business and showed where it was generating most of its profits – and it is undoubtedly highly profitable. Apart from the competitive advantage of scale and good IT systems it enjoys, it also benefits from promoting investment in funds, and running its own funds in addition. The charging structure of funds that it offers means it makes large amounts of money from clients who invest mainly in funds – for example £3,000 per annum on a £1 million SIPP portfolio. Other platforms have similar charging structures, but on Youinvest Mr Oakley suggested the charges on such a portfolio might be half.

His very revealing comment was this: “It is not difficult to see how this is not a particularly good deal for customers. It’s the main reason why I don’t own funds at all”. That goes for me also in terms of investing in open-ended funds via platforms.

Hargreaves Lansdown has been one of those typical growth stocks that do well in bull markets. But with the recent market malaise it has fallen 20% in the past month. Even so it is still on a prospective p/e of over 30. I have never invested in the stock because I was not convinced that it had real barriers to competition and always seemed rather expensive. Stockbroking platforms don’t seem greatly differentiated to me and most give a competent and reliable service from my experience. Price competition should be a lot fiercer in this market than it currently appears to be.

Almost all growth stocks in my portfolio have suffered in the last few weeks as investors have moved into cash, or more defensive stocks such as property. One favourite of private investors has been Renishaw (RSW) but that has fallen 35% since July with another jerk down last week. The company issued a trading statement last week that reported revenue growth of 8% but a decline in profits for the first quarter due to heavy short-term investment in “people and infrastructure”. According to a report in the FT Stifel downgraded the company to a “sell” based on signs that demand from Asian electronics and robotics makers has weakened. But has the growth story at this company really changed? On a prospective p/e now of about 20, it’s not looking nearly as expensive as it has done of late. The same applies to many other growth companies I hold and I still think investing in companies with growing revenues and profits in growing markets makes a lot more sense than investing in old economy businesses.

They are concentrating on the issue of giving shareholders in nominee accounts a vote after the recent furore over the vote at Unilever. But nominee account users lose other rights as well because they are not “members” of the company and on the share register. In reality “shareholders” in nominee accounts are not legally shareholders and that is a very dubious position to be in – for example if your stockbroker goes out of business. In addition it means other shareholders cannot communicate with you to express their concerns about the activities of the company which you own. The only proper solution is to reform the whole system of share registration so all shareholders are on the share register of the company. Nominee accounts only became widespread when it was necessary to support on-line broking platforms. But there are many better ways to do that. We just need a modern, electronic (i.e. dematerialised) share registration system.